Saturday, April 25, 2020

Another graffiti tour








These pictures are from a train that has been left for some weeks now to sit on the tracks just this side of the Mississippi River in St. Paul. Because my photography is uneven, with each visit to the train I come away with some pictures that work, and some that don't. So I keep going back for more, because there is a wealth of wonderful graffiti out there and I only get it little by little.



And I won't say so a ton more than that: More pictures, less words today.











I do want to say though that as much as I admire some of these amazing individual pieces:









I also really love the weathering, the feel of the tracks, and the way it all interacts with the train and the elements.





Here's the train:








And here's what some of the bridges and barricades of the area are like:







The used cans add up!








And the work on the metal walls nicely backdrop the train itself:















But most of my favorite things are the fresher graffiti work on the side of railroad cars. Here are a bunch of them, usually wider shots followed by details, if I have both, generally without comment:































































This one is one of my favorites on the train with its unusual approach, but I kept bringing home blurry pictures of it because I am not the best photographer. Finally I got a couple of decent shots of it:
























More, the first I might have shown before, but these are better shots of it now. The background is just fabulous!:


















I love the purple airbrush sort of effect:










Then:






















































And lastly here are some pictures of mainly details from the metal bridges and barricades:





















































And that about does it.



If one looks through my ouvre here on clerkmanifesto one would see I am not terribly prone to modesty, but here I actually feel it: All credit to the artists responsible for all this, and very little to me.

I hope you enjoyed it.











6 comments:

  1. I like your photo essays. Concerning the train graffiti...When I get stopped at an on-grade crossing, on Como or at Lexington and County E, I enjoy seeing them. But I wonder, what is the relationship between the rail lines and the graffiti artists? It seems pretty clear that the RRs can't keep up with the artwork. And based on very few observations, it seems as if the artists avoid messing with the words and numbers that identify the cars. Do they have a truce of some sort?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm glad you like them.

      I can only say my experience with RR security and their reputation is pretty... bad, so that truce thing seems very... hopeful. But what do I know?

      Delete
  2. The Graffiti post of 4/25/2020: Wow!!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Very cool. I like the chalk faces!

    ReplyDelete

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